ow these correlations are
all abundantly intelligible. It is a difficult matter for any
terrestrial animal to cross 900, or even 700, miles of ocean: therefore
only one lizard has succeeded in doing so in one of the two parallel
cases; and, living cut off from intercrossing with its parent form, the
descendants of that lizard have become modified so as to constitute a
peculiar species. But it is more easy for large flying animals to cross
those distances of ocean: consequently, there is only one instance of a
peculiar species of bird or bat--namely, a bull-finch in the Azores,
which, being a small land-bird, is not likely ever to have had any other
visitors from its original parent species coming over from Europe to
keep up the original breed. Lastly, it is very much more easy for
insects and land-mollusca to be conveyed to such islands by wind and
floating timber than it is for terrestrial mammals, or even than it is
for small birds and bats; but yet such means of transit are not
sufficiently sure to admit of much recruiting from the mainland for the
purpose of keeping up the specific types. Consequently, the insects and
the land-shells present a much greater proportion of peculiar
species--namely, one half and one fourth of the land-shells in the one
case, and one eighth of the beetles in the other. All these
correlations, I say, are abundantly intelligible on the theory of
evolution; but who shall explain, on the opposite theory, why orders of
beetles and land-mollusca should have been chosen from among all other
animals for such superabundant creation on oceanic islands, so that in
the Azores alone we find no less than 32 of the one and 14 of the other?
And, in this connexion, I may again allude to the peculiar species of
beetles in the island of Madeira. Here there are an enormous number of
peculiar species, though they are nearly all related to, or included
under the same genera as, beetles on the neighbouring continent. Now, as
we have previously seen, no less than 200 of these species have lost the
use of their wings. Evolutionists explain this remarkable fact by their
general laws of degeneration under disuse, and the operation of natural
selection, as will be shown later on; but it is not so easy for special
creationists to explain why this enormous number of peculiar species of
beetles should have been deposited on Madeira, all allied to beetles on
the nearest continent, and nearly all deprived of the use of th